How To Learn To Code For Web Development & Data Science

Are you thinking of becoming a coder? Good call. Salaries are good, jobs are easy, and future looks bright. Let’s explore how to break into the industry and what to expect.

Where To Start?

As a non-coder, you’ve got two main “easy” ways to break in:

Web developer with JavaScript

Data analysis with Python

Web development is more plausible for people who know design, marketing or business, as well as with relatively low experience with numbers & statistics.

Data Science is perfect for scientific academics: statisticians, econometricians, natural science majors, and anyone with a fine ability to deal with numbers. If you don’t like numbers, probably better to go with web development.

Web Development or Data Science?

Web development is good for those with a start-up or design attitude.

For example designers will be able to implement their training and create cool website designs, business administration graduates will be able to implement their business ideas.

In contrast, data science is more adequate for people highly numerate, since it requires a high level of understanding of statistics, plus the ability to extract useful business insights. In this sense, it’s perfect for science majors or highly numerate economics/business majors. But I’d be careful recommending it for those who aren’t too comfortable with data analysis.

Jobs as Freelance

Web developers will have a much easier way to find remote freelance jobs or project-based gigs.

Conversely, data scientists will need to work in-company until they gain a good portfolio and can start as consultants.

What Coding Language To Learn?

In simple terms, if you’re gonna try to design websites, go with JavaScript, plus the required HTML/CSS.
If you want to break into data science, learn python, which is probably one of the easiest coding languages anyway.
Don’t start with python if you want to do build websites. Don’t start with JavaScript if you want to build websites.

Learning Path: Web Development

HTML & CSS

JavaScript (MERN or MEAN Stack)

Express & Node

React (or Angular)

MongoDB

Learning Path: Data Science

Python (plus NumPy, pandas, SciKit, matplotlib)

Statistics

Math

Probability

Machine Learning

What Next?

The best way to break into the industry is by learning the skill.

This means: practice, practice, and more practice.

Build your portfolio, create your own website or data analysis.

How To Learn: Bootcamp or Online?

Learning to code has never been easier.

Nowadays there are hundreds of free excellent online resources.

If you prefer to learn coding with a teacher, a coding bootcamp might be for you.

DataCamp

Build Your Portfolio

Wordpress

Web Development: Most blogs and news websites run on Wordpress. Also many one-page pages including many start-up projects.

Wordpress is the best place to learn basic frontend skills: HTML/CSS & JavaScript.

While PHP runs the backend, Wordpress is still a fantastic starting point to get into web development.

Quantopian

Data Science: Quantopian is an platform for quantitative finance and algorithmic trading. Certainly not for beginners, but good for those who understand the fundamentals of data analysis and finance. It’s great to learn and build an advanced skill in python.

Kaggle

Data Science: A data science and machine learning competition website. While some are extremely advanced, the platform is a great place to learn. Google bought it for a reason…

Summary

If you come from a highly numerical background, data science with Python might fit you like a glove.

Otherwise it’s probably more more suitable to learn the web development stack with JavaScript + HTML/CSS.